


Lifelines

by servantofclio



Series: Sewers to Stars [19]
Category: Mass Effect, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, Earthborn (Mass Effect), F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 07:21:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1460713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/pseuds/servantofclio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's more to Shepard's background than she's ever let on. Now she has some things to explain to Garrus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lifelines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theherocomplex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theherocomplex/gifts).



> This story was written as a birthday present for theherocomplex, combining two of her favorite fandoms. Once I got the idea of inserting an Earthborn Shepard into the TMNT story--or switching them into the Mass Effect universe, your pick--I couldn't get it out of my head easily. So this happened, and there's more where this came from.

The QEC is small enough to fit in her hand. It looks like a battered piece of junk—vintage Donatello—and it’s actually a lifeline. Shepard has carried it everywhere with her since the day she got it, and she nearly always gets an answer on the other end when she calls. It’s hard to resist the urge to check in two or three times a day, a more vital link to what’s going on Earthside than occasional contacts with Anderson or the reports that Hackett sends her way when she asks. She restrains herself, though, and waits until she’s alone in her quarters and has a spare half hour to talk while she goes over paperwork.

 

But it was bound to happen eventually: she gave Garrus unrestricted access to her quarters, and that means that one day the door slides open while Shepard is sitting on the couch with her tiny QEC in hand.

 

“Shepard?” Garrus pauses at the top of the steps and even takes a step back. “Am I interrupting?” There’s a confused mandible twitch.

 

Shepard has a moment’s obscure delight that she can tell the difference between confused and amused and several other moods when it comes to mandible twitches. The delight fades a bit when she realizes that her boyfriend has just walked in on a conversation he has no context at all for. “Give me a minute,” she calls, and then says quietly into the device, “Listen, Donnie, I need to go. Can we talk later?”

 

“Sure thing. I’ve got plenty to work on. Be careful, Shepard.”

 

“Yeah, you too.”

 

She clicks the device off and stares at it in her hand. She only has a minute or two to decide how to handle this. In that minute, she knows what she needs to do. It’s impossible not to feel trepidation about it. She hasn’t asked anyone if she can do this, and she’s spent the better part of her life keeping this secret. The conditioning has deep roots.

 

But she’s serious about Garrus—a deep-down, burning seriousness—and she doesn’t want to go forward on a path strewn with lies and omissions. There are a very limited number of people in the galaxy that she trusts _completely_. Most of them live in New York; one of them is now fidgeting on the stairs, and it’s high time the parts of her life connected.

 

“Shepard? Were you talking to someone?”

 

She looks up and gives Garrus a lopsided smile as she leans back against the couch, lacing her fingers together with the QEC pressed between her hands. “You know, I think it’s time I told you about my family.” She says it without a tremor in her voice.

 

He blinks, and there’s another mandible twitch. This probably wasn’t what he was expecting. “I… okay.”

 

“Come on and sit down,” she says, jerking her head.

 

Garrus comes down the steps and settles himself next to her, with some space between them. He’s got a cautious look, and she can’t blame him; he obviously realizes she’s about to drop something big on him. “You never talk about your family,” he observes.

 

“There are reasons.” She half-wishes she had a glass of wine for this, but it’s probably better to keep her head clear. “I don’t remember much about my birth family. I don’t think my dad was ever in the picture, and my mom was gone by the time I was five or so. I think. I remember there were other people looking after me for a while, and I think I might have been in some kind of children’s home for a while, and at some point I ran away and lived on the streets.”

 

“The gang,” Garrus says, calmly enough. “I remember, from a couple years ago.”

 

Right. He was there when Finch thought he could manipulate her into doing the Reds’ dirty work. Finch always was an idiot. “The Reds,” she says. “Yeah. I was... I ran errands for a while, and then... things got complicated.” She takes a deep breath. “When I was about thirteen, I met some people who were different.”

 

She starts to explain, really explain. Garrus listens, unblinking, for several minutes, before he says, “Okay, hold up. Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. We’re talking about a family composed of standard terrestrial species that mutated into greater size and sentience?”

 

Shepard swallows. “Yeah.”

 

“And they trained extensively in nearly-forgotten martial arts and live in the sewer system of a major metropolis?”

 

“That’s right,” she says, steeling herself.

 

It is, she thinks, a mark of Garrus’ great faith in her that he does not immediately move to restrain her or call anyone to have her relieved of duty. Instead he gives her a steady, measuring look, which she meets without flinching.

 

“Okay,” he says, after a bit.

 

“You believe me?” she says before she can stop herself. She hadn’t completely thought this through, she realizes. If she were back in New York, she could just haul him down to the lair, or set up a meeting, or something, but here all she has is the QEC, and it’s audio-only.

 

He blinks. “Well, you don’t generally lie to me. And I don’t see what purpose it would serve to invent a story like this.”

 

“Right,” she says, a deep sense of relief welling up in her chest.

 

“I don’t entirely understand how the whole thing is possible, though. I mean, I’m no biologist or geneticist, but...”

 

“I should ask Mordin,” she says, wanting to laugh at the thought. “I don’t really know the details. I think they’re beyond me, too.”

 

Garrus shakes his head. “I also don’t understand how it’s possible to keep something like this a secret. Or why, really, I mean, the scientific community...”

 

“They’re people, not test subjects,” Shepard says sharply.

 

Garrus starts at her reaction. “I wasn’t meaning to imply otherwise. I’m sorry.”

 

Shepard sighs and slumps into the couch. “Sorry. You struck a nerve. It’s just... humans have a long, shitty track record when it comes to things that are different. Even just humans that look different. Think about Terra Firma and groups like that. There are plenty of humans who don’t want to admit that aliens are fully sentient. You still don’t see a lot of aliens on Earth, even in big cities; lots of humans have never laid eyes on anyone not human. And then... there’s a deep-rooted fear of mutation in much of the population. I’ve seen people, people they’d helped, even, scream and call them freaks. And I know the guys have always been afraid of… of ending up in a lab, or on display in a sideshow. Treated like animals, or worse. I can’t blame them for wanting to be careful.”

 

“Hm,” he says. “Okay, I can understand that.”

 

Shepard glances at Garrus. “How do you think turians would respond?”

 

“To a similar mutation involving an ordinary Palaven species?” Garrus tilts his head and his eyes go distant, thinking. “I don’t see maintaining secrecy on that for two decades, no, not even in a big city like Cipritine. The Hierarchy is too organized. Once it came out, I suspect they’d eventually be declared a client species, like the volus. Guaranteed rights and protections, possibility of full citizenship after military service.” He pauses for a moment. “I admit it would be a major legal wrangle to get there. There are standards for assessing sentience, though. It ought to be provable.”

 

“Hm.” Shepard considers that. “I guess, whether it’s really necessary or not, I can’t be sure. But it’s also not my call, and I’m not the one who’d suffer if something went wrong.”

 

“Right.” Garrus nods, slowly. “How could a secret like this stay that way so long, though?”

 

Shepard spreads out her hands and looks at where they fall on her knees. “Well, it’s not quite as if no one knows. There’s me, and there are a few other friends, and if you went to New York and hung around in the wrong neighborhoods, you might hear rumors, but you probably wouldn’t believe them. You say it wouldn’t be possible in the Hierarchy, so I believe you, but Earth is… not a nice place, a lot of the time. In a big city, there are a lot of secrets, a lot of places and people that no one notices. Things can get lost.” She looks up. “It’s not like they were lost kids. They were lost _pets_.”

 

She can see Garrus taking that in. He nods, slowly. “What about you, though? You were a lost kid.”

 

“I was in the system. I was in some sort of home, like I said. I got picked up a few times on minor charges, petty theft, vandalism...” She takes a deep breath. “Look, when I met the guys, I was on the road to getting deeper and deeper into the gang. They were the ones who showed me people didn’t have to be like that. They gave me a safe place to stay and made sure I went to school, and when I was old enough, they encouraged me to get out and enlist and see the rest of the galaxy. So...” She trails off, then starts again, fumbling for words. “That’s why I say they’re my family. Without that... I don’t know where I would have ended up.” She has a fairly good idea, though. Dead, quite likely, or in jail. It only took a couple of chance encounters to turn her life around, give her better examples, better friends. She’s not sure she’s finding the right words to convey what she means.

 

“Are they all right?” Garrus asks.

 

A breath puffs out of her, and her mouth turns up on one side. It’s like Garrus to understand what she’s trying to say and to get right to the heart of the matter, no matter how inadequate her words.

 

He adds, “I mean, I know you probably haven’t been able to contact them.”

 

Her fingers tighten, sweaty, around the little QEC device. “Actually, I can. And they’re fine. Still fighting. Really, they’re—” She clears her throat. “They’re working with people a lot more publicly than usual. Organizing resistance. Training folks. And I’m trying to keep them in the loop about the Crucible project. We’ve been keeping in touch with this.”

 

Garrus leans forward, eyes bright. “What’s that?”

 

“QEC.” She tosses it to him, and his jaw drops as he looks it over.

 

“How did they— I didn’t even know you _could_ miniaturize a QEC like this.”

 

“It’s audio only, no holoprojector, so that helps.” Her smile grows as she remembers hours spent tinkering in the lab. “This is the sort of thing Donnie’s good at. Very, very good at.”

 

“Huh.” He turns the thing over in his hands, testing the weight of it, before handing it back. “I hope I can meet them someday.”

 

Shepard sighs, her smile dropping away. “Me too.”

 

Garrus edges closer, and she leans into him gratefully. _Someday_ sounds so far off and distant—like _after this is over_ —and she can’t even imagine how much things could change. How many more people she might lose.

 

In Javik’s cycle, it took decades.

 

But Shepard has to hold onto something; she clings to the hope that somehow, some way, _someday_ she can put all the people she cares about in the same place, battered but still standing. “I think—I hope you’d all get along,” she says.

 

He puts an arm around her shoulders, and she rests her head against his shoulder, clutching the QEC in her hand.


End file.
